| SpaceX booked $6.45 billion in Golden Dome contracts in four days, and more awards come due while the study runs. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 5 MIN / 4 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE MERIDIAN |
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| Who should decide what the Pentagon buys next? |
| I'd pick a person with nothing to sell. That's the obvious answer to me, and I'd guess it's yours as well. Pete Hegseth picked differently. On September 30, the defense secretary named three co-leads for a study called Project Meridian. And two of them run defense contractors. |
| Elon Musk runs SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey co-founded Anduril, which builds drones, jammers and interceptors. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, is the third name. They get 120 days to list the weapons your military will need, and their report is due on January 28, 2027... |
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Emil Michael and an unnamed partner |
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| Let me walk you through what the memo sets up. Hegseth's commissioning memo puts Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, in charge. He's to run the study through a partner organization the memo doesn't name. It ends in a public report plus a classified annex. In plain English, that's a secret appendix only cleared officials get to read. |
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| "Five more Andurils and Palantirs and SpaceXs." |
| EMIL MICHAEL, PENTAGON CTO, VIA AXIOS |
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| Michael told reporters in December that he wanted to see those companies multiply, Axios reported. Now he oversees a study led by the founders of two of the three he named. He isn't hiding the preference, and I'll give him credit for saying it out loud. The memo doesn't authorize purchases, and Hegseth says Meridian won't write policy. Its job is to identify what the military should build, then propose ways to develop, test and field it. So it recommends what gets bought, and the services pay for it later... |
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$6.45 billion in four days |
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| Here's what SpaceX already collects. On May 26, the Space Force gave it a $2.29 billion contract for the Space Data Network Backbone. That's the satellite link that ties Golden Dome's sensors to its interceptors. Golden Dome is the president's missile shield. In plain English, it's a layered system meant to stop missiles fired at the United States. Three days after that first contract, SpaceX won a second, worth $4.16 billion, for satellites that track aircraft and missiles from space. |
| FILED / SPACE SYSTEMS COMMAND RELEASE, MAY 29 |
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| The Space Force awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion agreement for its Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program. The release says the service expects to issue multiple awards in the coming year to widen the vendor pool. It projects the first satellites in orbit by 2028. |
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| Read that middle sentence again. More awards are coming within a year, and Meridian runs inside that year. Breaking Defense reported that the fiscal 2027 budget asks for $7 billion more for this one program. The Space Force hasn't named the other companies in the pool. It hasn't disclosed the deal's total value either... |
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$542 billion over 20 years |
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| Anduril sits inside the same missile shield. In April, the Space Force picked 12 companies to build prototype space-based interceptors, worth up to $3.2 billion. SpaceX and Anduril both made the list, Bloomberg reported. An interceptor is a weapon that destroys an incoming missile. These would be launched from satellites. |
| Now look at the bill for the finished system. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a network of space-based interceptors could cost as much as $542 billion over 20 years. You can read the Space Force release on the tracking award yourself, and I'd start with its last paragraph. Meridian will rank which weapons matter most. Its two founders hold contracts in the program with the biggest price tag. |
| I'll be fair here. Meridian doesn't award contracts, and both companies won these deals before it existed. But will Musk or Luckey step aside from topics that touch their own firms? I looked for a statement, and I couldn't find one. |
| So here's your stake. Hegseth is cutting 20% of roughly 800 general and admiral posts by January, Asia Times reported. The officers go, and two men who sell weapons get to say which weapons come next. Your taxes already cover the $6.45 billion SpaceX won in May. They'll cover whatever Meridian recommends in January, too. |
